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LOUNGE LIZARD - Looking for the perfect storm

As the great cocktail wave sweeps across the continent why can’t it come to View Royal?

I’d recently heard that Six Mile Pub was using more local product, Two Rivers meat, Portofino breads, Phillips soda – they also joined the Grease Cycle Project based in Duncan. Last year they saved 10.70 tonnes of greenhouse gases from being emitted into the atmosphere just by recycling grease from their deep fryers – and rumour had it they installed a cocktail program. After all, as the great cocktail wave sweeps across the continent why can’t it come to View Royal? And logic, well my logic, dictates that if they care about the food source then they would care about the cocktails.

There were two pages of cocktails and surprisingly quite a number contained fresh apple cider including two riffs on classics, the Bourbon Sour and The Perfect Storm.

The purpose of the cider as it turned out was filler. The drinks appeared in huge glasses normally used for sleeves of beer. Both of these classics typically belong in rock glasses with ice, spirit and small amounts of the other ingredients.

The Perfect Storm it wasn’t. It tasted mainly of ginger. The Bourbon Sour didn’t fair much better and lacked the tartness you would expect from a sour. The rest of the list inspired no further sampling for me as it was rife with flavoured vodkas.

Finally, for the cocktail buffs: this May, the James Beard Foundation will induct Dale DeGroff, 66, into its Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America. Nice.